On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

Monday, December 31, 1990

Comments: There seems to be a pattern at the Prometheus Awards in which a mediocre book wins the award over a collection of nominees consisting of much better books. In 1990, this happened in both categories, although the disparity in quality between the winner and the competition was, as usual, most apparent in the Hall of Fame category where F. Paul Wilson's book Healer emerged victorious over Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Levin's This Perfect Day, and Zamyatin's We.

Comments: In 1990, The Year's Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection, edited by the formidable team of Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. This win was surely deserved, but I have always been somewhat less than enthusiastic when such types of anthologies win awards. The World Fantasy award for Best Anthology has never been dominated by a single "Best of" series in the same way that the Locus Award Best Anthology award has been dominated by Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction series, but it almost seems anticlimactic when collections like this win. Aren't they supposed to be a compilation of the best genre fiction of the year? Given that the guiding principle of other anthologies is usually something other than "compile all of the best stories from this year into one volume", it almost seems unfair for them to be competing with these "Best of" anthologies. On the other hand, these volumes do usually represent the best genre fiction of the year, so excluding or handicapping them also seems unfair. So we're left with what seems to me to be an ultimately unsatisfying situation that has no real solution. The other anthologies at least get the benefit of a nomination, which is something.

Other Nominees:Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana by Michael BishopA Dozen Tough Jobs by Howard WaldropThe Father of Stones by Lucius ShepardOn the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks by Joe R. Lansdale

Other Nominees:The Edge of the World by Michael SwanwickMr. Fiddlehead by Jonathan CarrollA Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned by Edward BryantVaricose Worms by Scott BakerYore Skin's Jes's Soft 'n Purty . . . He Said. by Chet Williamson

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: There are few things that will make you realize how little science fiction you have read more than cataloging all of the genre awards that have been handed out over the years. I have read a lot of science fiction over the years, and yet I have not only not read any of the three books that earned places in the voting for the 1990 Campbell Award, I haven't read any other books by any of these three authors. I am sure they are all fine authors and these are all fine books, I just haven't gotten to them yet, which is my failing and not theirs.

Comments: There is a kind of inevitability in the results for the 1990 Clarke Awards. I'm not talking about Geoff Ryman winning for The Child Garden, or even Jonathan Carroll winning for A Child Across the Sky. No, I am referring to the tie for third place, which was almost assured after the judges saw fit to include a third place ranking in 1989. Once a new result category is added, it is almost a certainty that it will quickly result in a tie, and in 1990, the Clarke Awards provided yet another example of this phenomenon.

Comments: In 1990 the ridiculousness of awarding the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship to works by Inklings seems to have reached its apex with the award going to Tolkien's Hobbit, albeit an annotated version. Even if one considers the annotations by Douglas Anderson to be the "scholarship" being honored, the primary element of the work in question is Tolkien's fiction, meaning that the Mythopoeic Society essentially gave an award for scholarship about Tolkien to a work of fiction by Tolkien. This gives the appearance, at the very least, of an incestuous decision making process.

Comments: The 1990 Locus Awards were very good for Dan Simmons. Not only did he win the award for Best Science Fiction novel, but he also had another novel place in that same category and had a third novel win in the Best Horror Novel category. Orson Scott Card also had an impressive showing with two wins and a couple of other nominations.

But I think that the most interesting thing about the 1990 Locus Awards is that Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses was nominated in the Best Fantasy Novel category. For anyone who doesn't think that fantasy fiction has anything meaningful to say, this is the ultimate riposte. Not only did Rushdie's novel have something important to say, his saying it enraged vast numbers of people.

Other Nominees:
2. Rimrunners by C.J. Cherryh
3. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
4. Tides of Light by Gregory Benford
5. A Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger
6. The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson
7. Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
8. Falcon by Emma Bull
9. Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
10. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
11. Imago by Octavia E. Butler
12. A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt
13. Good News from Outer Space by John Kessel
14. The Third Eagle by R.A. MacAvoy
15. Buying Time (aka The Long Habit of Living) by Joe Haldeman
16. Homegoing by Frederik Pohl
17. Being Alien by Rebecca Ore
18. Farewell Horizontal by K.W. Jeter
19. Out on Blue Six by Ian McDonald
20. Orbital Decay by Allen M. Steele
21. The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
22. Sugar Rain by Paul Park
23. Eden by Stanislaw Lem
24. Dawn's Uncertain Light by Neal Barrett, Jr.
25. Black Milk by Robert Reed
26. On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton
27. The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
28. The Queen of Springtime (aka The New Springtime) by Robert Silverberg

Other Nominees:
2. The Dark Half by Stephen King
3. The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
4. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
5. Midnight by Dean R. Koontz
6. The Wolf's Hour by Robert R. McCammon
7. Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell
8. In the Land of the Dead by K.W. Jeter
9. Mystery by Peter Straub
10. Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy A. Collins
11. Nightshade by Jack Butler
12. Owl Light by Michael Paine
13. John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins

3. Labyrinth by Lois McMaster Bujold
4. The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold
5. Pageant Wagon by Orson Scott Card (reviewed in The Folk of the Fringe)
6. Time-Out by Connie Willis
7. Tiny Tango by Judith Moffett
8. The Originist by Orson Scott Card
9. Great Work of Time by John Crowley
10. In Another Country by Robert Silverberg
11. The True Nature of Shangri-La by Kim Stanley Robinson
12. No Spot of Ground by Walter Jon Williams
13. A Touch of Lavender by Megan Lindholm
14. Marîd Changes His Mind by George Alec Effinger
15. The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard
16. The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
17. Destroyer of Worlds by Charles Sheffield
18. Children of the Wind by Kate Wilhelm
19. Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana by Michael Bishop
20. Red Planet Blues by Allen M. Steele
21. The Egg by Steven Popkes
22. Re: Generations by Mike McQuay
23. Nanoware Time by Ian Watson

Other Nominees:
2. Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another by Robert Silverberg
3. At the Rialto by Connie Willis
4. For I Have Touched the Sky by Mike Resnick
5. Sisters by Greg Bear
6. The Price of Oranges by Nancy Kress
7. Bound for Glory by Lucius Shepard
8. Surrender by Lucius Shepard
9. Everything But Honor by George Alec Effinger
10. War Fever by J.G. Ballard
11. Steel Dogs by Ray Aldridge
12. Just Another Perfect Day by John Varley
13. A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned by Edward Bryant
14. The Loch Moose Monster by Janet Kagan
15. Sleepside Story by Greg Bear
16. Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man by Megan Lindholm
17. The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler
18. The Part of Us That Loves by Kim Stanley Robinson
19. A Sleep and a Forgetting by Robert Silverberg
20. Varicose Worms by Scott Baker
21. Listen by Ian McDonald
22. Fast Cars by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
23. (tie) Not Without Honor by Judith Moffett
(tie) The Sin-Eater of the Kaw by Bradley Denton
25. Misbegotten by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
26. Miss Carstairs and the Merman by Delia Sherman
27. The Third Sex by Alan Brennert
28. Snow Angels by Michael Swanwick
29. To the Promised Land by Robert Silverberg
30. On the Wings of a Butterfly by Michael F. Flynn
31. Faith by James Patrick Kelly

8. To the High Castle Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 by Gregg Rickman
9. The Dark-Haired Girl by Philip K. Dick
10. Harlan Ellison's Watching by Harlan Ellison
11. The Way to Ground Zero by Martha A. Bartter
12. Enchanted Drawings by Charles Solomon
13. When Worldviews Collide by John J. Pierce

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